Red letter day

Yesterday was a family version of what some might call a red letter day. The excitement has been building for months, heightening in the past few weeks. March 10th was the date of release for not one, but two very important games. That was specifically the case for Game Fanatic, who was enthusiastic for both. Both he and Lego Lover have been awaiting the release of Pokémon Black and White for nearly a year. Game Fanatic also had a copy of Dragon Age 2 on pre-order at EB Games and had definite ideas of how the day would go once he got his copy.

The pre-order turned out to be a major mistake because the retailer kept changing the price so that the final price to pay was quite a bit higher than the advertised price. It now occurs to me that had the price been paid in full when the product was reserved, he would have got the lower price. Lesson learned. The shop was supposed to contact us to advise the product was in, but this didn’t happen at all. I finally telephoned at noon to be told it was in and that I should have been notified.

The boys got ready and we went off to the shopping center to make purchases. There was a bit of a crowd in EB Games when we arrived and we had to wait for about ten or fifteen minutes to be served. Once the product was in hand, the sales dude tried to sell several other products, none of them related to the game being purchased.  Payment was made and we moved on to see about the Pokemon games.

We got to the store that had advertised the best price on Pokémon yesterday, only to find no copies on the shelf. In fact, there were none in stock. There was something about floods preventing the train, which held the precious cargo, from crossing from the east into our isolated capital. There was something of a sense of déja vu about it since this is a similar story to what we’ve heard for other highly anticipated video games in the past. (It  hasn’t always been a flood, but is often a train derailment that is to blame.) We moved on to the store with the next best price to hear the same story. It was also revealed that the other major discount retailer was in the same situation, along with JB HiFi, one of the major resellers of video games locally.

I don’t know why, but EB Games always has games in stock on the day, no matter whether there has been a train delay due to derailment/floods/some other crisis or not. I don’t know how they manage this when so many other stores fail to get theirs. Maybe all the stores get their shipments from the same cargo load.

I already knew the games were in stock at EB Games since several people had picked up copies that had been pre-ordered. They were charging $21 more than the lowest price though. We were in a stuck situation because Lego Lover just had to have his game on the day and he was willing to pay the extra since that’s what he had originally set aside from his budget anyway. Game Fanatic tried very hard to persuade him to wait but he would not be swayed. I wasn’t happy about it but was not stopping him spending extra if that’s really what he wanted. We had an appointment not too far in the future so we got the game at a higher price. Game Fanatic was quite distressed by this chain of events and was far more upset than anyone else, even though he had not been directly affected.

We came home and Lego Lover immediately started playing his new game. The night before, he’d stayed up late working on school work so that he’d be free to play all day yesterday. He happily played for many hours with the occasional break. Game Fanatic had a doctor appointment to attend so delayed setting his game up due to lack of time. When we returned, he got properly started and played for many hours into the evening.

Because this was such a special day, Game Fanatic asked to have his favorite meal, a rice pilaf sort of dish (with chickpeas, mushrooms, potato and Spanish chorizo sausage), to celebrate and I obliged him. Fortunately, I can now make the dish fairly easily with our pressure cooker and it doesn’t heat up the kitchen these days. The Scientist and I even got a bottle of fancy sparkling apple juice to aid in the celebration since Game Fanatic likes it so much. I will point out that Lego Lover isn’t much concerned about special foods for this sort of occasion and he doesn’t like any of the foods prepared so had an alternative. And we forgot about the apple drink last night so didn’t have that until today.

I know for a fact that Lego Lover had a great day. And I think Game Fanatic had an overall good day even though he gets a bit caught up in the negative details at times.

Since Game Fanatic was keen to get his own copy of Pokémon, I did some calling around this morning to work out if any other shops had copies now available. This included one phone call where I spent ages on hold while waiting to be transferred, only to have phone disconnect when the call finally got through. Eventually I worked out that Dick Smith Electronics did have copies available, and at just a couple dollars higher than the cheapest price. This absolutely sickened me because they had a store in the same shopping center and quite possibly did have them in stock when we were there. Just meters from the EB Games store, in fact. I never considered them because I thought I’d seen them advertise a much higher price. And I didn’t think of them at all when we ran into supply issues elsewhere. Today, that store didn’t have any stock available but another one nearby did. The Scientist phoned them and reserved a copy. Game Fanatic and I left soon afterwards and were there in less than twenty minutes. So today, Game Fanatic has been switching back and forth from one game to another and seems reasonably content.

Since it was my stupid lack of thought that cost Lego Lover the extra money, I gave him back $20 of the extra he had paid. He shrugged his shoulders and stashed it with his other money in an old Bionicle box. He is still quite happy with his new game.